Prime Healthcare Foundation’s purchase of Clayton County’s only hospital is on its way to the Georgia attorney general for review. A bankruptcy court issued its final approval order on the deal this week. Officials with Prime Healthcare hope the acquisition of Southern Regional Medical Center is completed in December. Southern Regional, in Riverdale south of…
“Have you ever seen your eardrum before? Well, today’s the day! We’re gonna see what the Good Lord created in there!” Annalyn Tocci is joking with a man as she inspects his ear, using a device hooked up to a display screen. Tocci is in the hearing aid field. It’s an interesting line of work,…
This week, shareholders of Aetna and Humana voted to approve the merger of the two health insurance giants. Federal and state regulators will still have their say on the deal, and on another insurance mega-merger, that of Anthem and Cigna. In a new GHN Commentary, Dr. Deep Shah, an Emory medical resident, argues that the…
The past decade has witnessed dramatic consolidation in every dimension of the metro Atlanta health care market. Spurred by changes from the Affordable Care Act, hospitals are hastily marrying each other and buying up smaller medical practices in their quest to expand. Such activities tend to increase costs by 20 percent or more in an…
Patients such as D.C. are known in health care circles as “frequent fliers,” a term that has nothing to do with airline miles. D.C. (his initials), 62, has been to Appling Healthcare’s emergency room in the South Georgia town of Baxley several times this year with various ailments. He has no health insurance and no…
A patient scheduled for surgery makes sure that both the hospital and surgeon are in the health plan’s network prior to the operation. But after the surgery, a surprise bill arrives for hundreds of dollars. It turns out that the anesthesiologist used in the procedure was not in the patient’s insurance network – and the…
The Georgia campus of Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine has been approved to launch a physician assistant program. The two-year master’s degree program will begin next June, with 20 students in the first class. The Georgia campus of PCOM is in Suwanee, a northeastern suburb of Atlanta. Physician assistants practice medicine with supervision by licensed…
Dr. Ian Crozier was caring for Ebola-infected people in Sierra Leone in 2014 when he contracted the disease himself. The 44-year-old physician flew to Atlanta and was placed in the special isolation unit at Emory University Hospital. Crozier, known as “Patient 3” at Emory to protect his identity, was very sick, with multiple organ failure….
A northwest Georgia hospital, in financial peril, shut down its labor and delivery services this week. Hutcheson Medical Center in Fort Oglethorpe joined many other Georgia hospitals that have given up obstetrical services, citing costs. In a new GHN Commentary, Dr. Carla Roberts, a founding partner of Reproductive Surgical Specialists at Northside Forsyth Hospital, argues…
Recently the Department of Community Health decided not to move forward with a plan to improve health care access for the uninsured people of the state. Georgia officials said the plan was just “too costly, with administrative costs alone estimated at $3.5 million.” Georgia has among the highest rates of uninsured people among the 50…